 "A marwari success story")
BHUJIA BARONS: The untold story of how haldiram built a 5000 crore empire
Author: Pavitra Kumar
Publisher: Penguin
Price: Rs 399
Pages: 219
The extended Agarwal family, which is spread over Bikaner, Kolkata, Nagpur and Delhi, sells snacks and sweets worth Rs 5,000 crore in a year. This is more than McDonald's and Domino's put together. And this the Agarwals do with minimal advertising and promotion: the quality of their products is publicity enough.
Without any fuss and noise, unlike Baba Ramdev, they have managed to get the better of multinational instant food giants. Their success is a tribute to their Marwari enterprise, conviction, cunning and perseverance. It was a story waiting to be told. And Pavitra Kumar's breezy book puts it all together very nicely. It competently captures the family's journey from humble beginnings in arid Bikaner to its current success as a modern enterprise.
The roots of the family business are in bhujia, the skinny little addictive snack made of wheat and lentils. Contrary to popular belief, Haldiram (Ganga Bishen Agarwal) did not invent it: halwais in Bikaner had started making bhujia many years before Haldiram was born in 1908. What Haldiram did, even though he was just in his teens, was to concoct a new formula for making bhujia, which was an instant hit. Actually, the secret recipe was devised by Haldiram's aunt who would make it at home. The Haldiram's business empire owes its success to her culinary prowess.
For long years, Haldiram sold bhujia out of a tiny shop in Bikaner. He knew his spices and worked diligently from morning till evening. Bhujia was sold in paper cones and paper bags. Haldiram was the first halwai in Bikaner to brand his bhujia when he came up with the name Dungar Sev. Dungar Singh was a popular ruler of Bikaner and the brand gave it a royal association. The business grew in leaps and bounds after that.
Haldiram also initiated the family's move to Kolkata. He had gone to the eastern metropolis, then a thriving hub of business, to attend a wedding in a friend's family. The bhujia he made there was an instant hit with the wedding guests. It was then suggested to him that the large Marwari population would lap it up. Haldiram started out in Kolkata with a pushcart laden with his trademark bhujia that would do the rounds of the Marwari neighbourhoods like Burrabazaar.
But that is where Haldiram's adventurism ended. He was otherwise conservative and headstrong - a trait he kept till his death in 1980. When a grandson bought a shop near the Bikaner railway station, he was so incensed that he struck him with his walking stick. When the same grandson suggested modern packaging which would give their bhujia a distinct identity and extend its shelf life, he ran into his formidable grandfather. The grandson, Manoharlal, went on to become one of the primary architects of Haldiram's success in recent years in and around Delhi - he is the largest faction of the Agarwal family now.
Manoharlal had started out in Delhi in 1984 with a shop in Chandni Chowk. He had taken quarters in a lane close to the Sis Ganj Gurudwara. And that is where he also had his workshop. The anti-Sikh riots that happened after Indira Gandhi's death saw his house and workshop gutted. Yet, Manoharlal was able to establish himself as the largest vendor of sweets and snacks in a market where he was a rank outsider.
The book tells us in a very simple way why Marwaris succeed. Apart from sharp business instincts and the ability to take risks, it is about sheer hard work. The entire Agarwal family sullied its hands in the workshop, working long hours with their karigars. Success did not come overnight: it was the result of painstaking efforts of several years.
Writers like Kumar deserve credit for highlighting the Marwari work ethos. Till not so long ago, Marwaris were looked at with discernible derision and were the object of ridicule in popular literature and cinema. After books like this one, hopefully people will see them with new respect and realise that their contribution to the country is second to none.
The community is often ridiculed for not evolving with time and sticking to a pre-modern work culture. The Agarwal family is a good blend of modernity and tradition. The latest generation, great-grandchildren of Haldiram, are using modern tools to serve age-old Indian recipes to the world: their produce is available in over 100 countries.
It was the Agarwals who popularised North Indian snacks and sweets in places like Kolkata and Nagpur. Their stupendous success in these markets must count amongst the greatest market interventions of our times.
The Marwari story is also about familial strife. And the Agarwals have had their share of splits and fights. The Kolkata faction does not see eye to eye with the other factions and they are also locked in an expensive legal battle over the use of the brand in Delhi. This is the reason none of the branches is able to go public. By all accounts, it is unlikely that the row will get settled anytime soon, so far have the two factions drifted. Reconciliation is a distant dream- so distant that nobody is even attempting it.
There are skeletons in the Agarwal family's cupboard too, and Kumar brings them out in full detail. Prabhu Shankar Agarwal, Haldiram's grandson who runs the Kolkata business, was in 2010 sentenced to life imprisonment for assault on a tea vendor. He had wanted to put up a mall in the city but the vendor would not give up his tiny shop. Prabhu Shankar was subsequently released on bail.
In Kumar's account, Prabhu Shankar comes across as impetuous and rash, yet street-smart and artistic. He had the reputation of flying off the handle from a young age, and Kumar feels that his father may have encouraged this trait in him. Kumar candidly admits that she could probe the businessman only up to a limit over the incident that landed him in prison.
Will Haldiram's survive in the future? The kind of snack food it makes is labelled junk food by all health-conscious people, and their numbers are climbing swiftly; will people gorge on oily chhole-bhature, extra-sweet kaju katli and heavy-duty bhujia in the years to come? That is the challenge the next generation will have to answer.
